A pre-christian CRUCIFIED Christ: Cyrus the Great

[Giuseppe]

Tomyris was a queen who ruled the Massagetae or Iranian people of Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea. This took place around 530 BC.

When Cyrus the Great captured her son, she challenged him to a battle… and she won.

The Persians were defeated and Cyrus was killed. Tomyris had his dead body decapitated then crucified and is rumored to have carried the head with her at all times in a winesack filled with blood.

https://historywitch.com/tag/cyrus-the-great/

Cyrus was named "Christ" by the Jews.

[Secret Alias]

It's always bad to cite this sort of a source. We need to deal with PRIMARY MATERIAL. What is the source for the statement that Cyrus was crucified and how well was it known?

[Ben C. Smith]

The source for this crucifixion of Cyrus by Tomyris may simply be Wikipedia:

According to Herodotus, Cyrus was killed and Tomyris had his corpse beheaded and then crucified,* and shoved his head into a wineskin filled with human blood.

* Mayor, Adrienne. Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World. New York, Overlook Duckworth, 2003; pp. 157-159.

The footnote is to a book by Adrienne Mayor, which I happen to have read before. The relevant pages have this:

It is notable that in the historical accounts of using wine in warfare, the victims were identified as barbarians, considered inferior to the civilized cultures of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Carthaginians. (Similar justifications were expressed in British decisions to use chemical poisons against ignorant and uncivilized tribespeople in Asia and Africa in the early twentieth century.) The Greek and Roman tacticians who recounted the stories consistently stressed the barbarians’ inordinate passion for alcohol, as though to justify a biological treachery that would not be employed against more cultured, noble enemies. For example, Polyaenus advised the emperors on how to defeat Asian barbarians by turning their “propensity” for trickery and terrorism and love of intoxicants against them.

Polyaenus, it seems, was rather enamored of the method of defeating enemies with intoxicants. He also described how Tomyris, queen of the Massagetae (a tribe of Scythians), was said to have lured the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, to an ignominious death in 530 BC. But Polyaenus, writing nearly seven hundred years after the event, garbled the story. In his version, Tomyris pretended to flee in fear from the Persians, leaving casks of wine in her camp. The Persians consumed the wine all night long, celebrating as if they had won a victory. When they lay sleeping off their wine and wantonness, Tomyris attacked the Persians, who were scarcely able to move, and killed them all, including the king.

In fact, Cyrus did die an ignoble death during the conflict with Tomyris, but according to the Greek historian Herodotus, it was Cyrus who had tricked the milk-drinking nomads with strong wine. Herodotus’s version was based on information he gained from personal interviews with Scythians about one hundred years after the event, so his story is considered more credible.

According to Herodotus, the Massagetae were a tribe of nomadic Scythians living east of the Caspian Sea. These formidable warriors were unfamiliar with wine—their favored intoxicants were hashish and fermented mare’s milk. When Cyrus began a war to annex their territory to his empire, his advisors recommended a clever stratagem. Since the Massagetae “have no experience with luxuries [and] know nothing of the pleasures of life,” they could be easily liquidated by setting out a tempting banquet for them, complete with “strong wine in liberal quantities.”

The Greek historian Strabo, who also discussed the event, made the important point that Cyrus was in retreat after losing a battle with the nomads and therefore had to resort to underhanded trickery. Herodotus also stressed the moral aspect of the story, that Cyrus used biological treachery because his men lacked the skill and bravery necessary for a fair fight.

Cyrus ordered a fancy banquet to be set out under the Persian tents and withdrew, leaving behind a contingent of his most feeble, expendable soldiers. Tomyris’s army arrived and in quick order killed the weak men that were sacrificed to the ruse by Cyrus. Congratulating themselves, the nomads then took their seats at the splendid feast laid out for them and drank so much wine that they fell into a stupor. Cyrus returned and slew the drunken Massagetae. He also captured Tomyris’s son, but the youth killed himself as soon as he sobered up the next morning.

Enraged by the bloodshed achieved through such base bio-sabotage, Tomyris sent a message to Cyrus equating wine with poison. “Glutton that you are for blood, you have no cause to be proud of this day’s work, which has no hint of soldierly courage. Your weapon was red wine, with which you Persians are wont to drink until you are so mad that shameful words float on the fumes. This is the poison you treacherously used to destroy my men and my son.” Leave my country now, she demanded, “or I swear by the Sun to give you more blood than you can drink.” Cyrus ignored the message. The battle that ensued was one of the most violent ever recorded, wrote Herodotus. According to his informants, the two sides exchanged volleys of arrows until there were no more, and then there was a long period of vicious hand-to-hand fighting with spears and daggers. By the end of the day, the greater part of the Persian army lay destroyed where it had stood. Tomyris sent her men to search the heaps of dead Persians for Cyrus’s body. Hacking off his head, she plunged it into a kettle of blood drawn from the king’s fallen men, crying, “I fulfill my threat! Here is your fill of blood!”

Queen Tomyris’s milk-drinking warriors from the steppes were unfamiliar with the effects of wine, which made Cyrus’s strategy seem especially odious. In other instances, however, taking advantage of an enemy’s careless overindulgence in food or liquor did not seem unfair, since it was assumed that a commander should be able to restrain his men’s behavior, and also because of the element of free choice in the decision to indulge or not. Contaminating wine with poisonous substances was particularly treacherous, however, because it eliminated free choice, and offering poisoned wine as a gift was even more devious because it violated the ancient principles of trust and fair gift exchange. And yet, ever since the Trojan Horse trick took down Troy, vigilant generals and their armies should have been on guard against accepting “gifts” from enemies.

There is nothing about a crucifixion here, and Mayor's whole focus is upon underhanded tactics in ancient warfare, not upon the history proper of Cyrus or the Medes or Persians. Nor is there anything about Cyrus being crucified in book 1 of Herodotus (though Darius has other people crucified at one point). Xenophon has him recognizing that his death is at hand, making the appropriate sacrifices, giving lengthy speeches, shaking hands (!) with his comrades, and then dying peacefully in Cyropaedia 8.7.1-28. And, as Mayor indicates, Polyaenus attributes Cyrus' underhanded tactic to Tomyris in Stratagems of War 8.28; but he says nothing there about the manner of Cyrus' death.

Mayor also has a book about female warriors (The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World) which recounts more briefly this clash between Tomyris and Cyrus, but again, she says nothing about a crucifixion.

I confess I cannot yet seem to find a source for Wikipedia's claim that Tomyris had Cyrus' corpse crucified. It may simply be a mistake; if so, it is one which has been replicated across the internet. A Google search for cyrus crucified by tomyris produces quite a few relevant hits.

[Secret Alias]

Thank you Ben. I know we are on the same page with respect to this. Misinformation stands in contradiction to all the work we engage in at this forum. Giuseppe you really need to concentrate your efforts or at least double check your claims against primary material. If you can't find the primary source for a claim avoid posting it here.

[neilgodfrey]

It's from Diodorus Siculus, 2.44.2

For instance, when Cyrus the king of the Persians, the mightiest ruler of his day, made a campaign with a vast army into Scythia, the queen of the Scythians not only cut the army of the Persians to pieces but she even took Cyrus prisoner and crucified him; and the nation of the Amazons, after it was once organized, was so distinguished for its manly prowess that it not only overran much of the neighbouring territory but even subdued a large part of Europe and Asia.

[Ben C. Smith]

It's from Diodorus Siculus, 2.44.2

For instance, when Cyrus the king of the Persians, the mightiest ruler of his day, made a campaign with a vast army into Scythia, the queen of the Scythians not only cut the army of the Persians to pieces but she even took Cyrus prisoner and crucified him; and the nation of the Amazons, after it was once organized, was so distinguished for its manly prowess that it not only overran much of the neighbouring territory but even subdued a large part of Europe and Asia.

Excellent. Thank you. One mystery solved.

[Giuseppe]

Thank you Ben. I know we are on the same page with respect to this. Misinformation stands in contradiction to all the work we engage in at this forum. Giuseppe you really need to concentrate your efforts or at least double check your claims against primary material. If you can't find the primary source for a claim avoid posting it here.

I have read the info about a real crucified Cyrus in the book of the great Mythicist J M. Robertson, ''The Jesus Problem''.

Naturaliter, It is an argument against the apologists à la Bart Ehrman (that the Jews didn't know a suffering Messiah before Christ).

[neilgodfrey]

I have read the info about a real crucified Cyrus in the book of the great Mythicist J M. Robertson, "The Jesus Problem".

Interesting. Somewhat dated, but nonetheless some interesting suggestions. From J.M.R's Jesus Problem, pages 64-65

8. The Suffering Messiah

By way of accounting for the Jewish refusal to see in Jesus the promised Messiah, orthodox exegesis has spread widely the belief that it was no part of the Messianic idea that the Anointed One should die an ignominious death; and some of us began by accepting that account of the case. Clearly it was not the traditional or generally prevailing Jewish expectation. Yet in the Acts we find Peter and Paul alike (iii, 18; xvii, 3; xxvi, 23) made to affirm that the prophets in general predicted that Christ should suffer; and in Luke (xxiv, 26-27, 44-46) the same assertion is put in the mouth of Jesus. Either then the exegetes regard these assertions as unfounded or they admit that one school of interpretation in Jewry found a number of “prophetical” passages which foretold the Messiah’s exemplary death. And the A.V. margin refers us to Ps. xxii; Isa. 1, 6; liii, 5, etc.; Dan. ix, 26.

Now, these are adequate though not numerous docu­mentary grounds for the doctrine, on Jewish principles of interpretation. Jewish, indeed, the Messianic idea is not in origin : it is Perso-Babylonian; 1 and the idea of a suffering or re-arising Messiah may well have come in from that side. But equally that may have found some Jewish acceptance. We can see very well that in Daniel “the Anointed One”—that is, “the Messiah” and “the Christ”—refers to the Maccabean hero; but that as well as the other passages, on Jewish principles, could apply to the Messiah of any period; and the Septuagint reading of Psalm xxii, 16 : “They pierced my hands and my feet,” was a specification of crucifixion. It is not im­possible that that reading was the result of the actual crucifixion of Cyrus, who had been specified as a “Christ” in Isaiah. We have nothing to do here with rational interpretation : the whole conception of prophecy is irrational; but the construing of old texts as prophecies was a Jewish specialty.

When then a theistic rationalist of the last generation wrote of the gospel Jesus :—

His being a carpenter, occupying the field of barbaric Galileo, and suffering death as a culprit, are not features which the constructor of an imaginary tale would go out of his way to introduce wherewith to associate his hero, and therefore, probably, we have here real facts presented to us,

he was far astray. Anything might be predicated of a Jewish Messiah. Not only had the Messianic Cyrus been crucified : the anointed and triumphant Judas Maceabams, under whose auspices the Messianic belief had revived in Israel in the second century B.C., had finally fallen in battle; and his brother Simon, who was actually regarded as the Messiah, was murdered by his son-in law.2

It is not here argued that the Messianic idea had been originally connected with the Jesus cult; on the contrary that cult is presented as a non-national one, surviving in parts of Palestine in connection with belief in an ancient deity and the practice of an ancient rite, in a different religious atmosphere from that of Messianism. The solution to which we shall find ourselves led is that at a certain stage the Messianic idea was grafted on the cultus; and this stage is likely to have begun after the fall of Jerusalem, when for most Jews the hope of a Maccabean recovery was buried.

The footnote reference 1 to the Perso-Babylonian origin of the Messianic idea is to JMR's book, Pagan Christs, p. 166-167:

Beyond conjectures we cannot at present go ; but the significance given to the name of Jeshua, the high-priest of the Return, in the book of Zechariah,4 at a time when the book of Joshua did not exist, tells of a Messianic idea so associated when Messianism was but beginning among the Jews. And as the Messianic idea seems to have come to them, as it fittingly might, during their exile, perhaps from the old Babylonian source of the myth of the returning Hammurabi— who in his own code declares himself the Saviour Shepherd and the King of Righteousness5— or from the later Mazdean doctrine that the Saviour Saoshyant, the yet unborn Son of Zarathustra, is at the end of time to raise the dead and destroy Ahriman,6 it may have had many divine associations such as later orthodox Judaism would sedulously obliterate.

What is specially important in this connection is the fact that the doctrine of a suffering Messiah gradually developed among the Jews, for the most part outside the canonical literature. For the doctrine that “the Christ must needs have suffered” 7 can be scripturally supported only from passages like the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, where our A. V. alters the past tense into the present, thus making a description of Israel’s past sufferings serve as a mystic type. Cyrus, who is called Messiah in Deutero-Isaiah, was reputed to have been crucified, but not in his Messianic capacity.1 [i.e. Diod. Sic. ii. 44] The presumption then is that the doctrine was extra-canonical, and was set up by Gentile example. Even in the Book of Enoch, where the Messianic doctrine is much developed, the Messiah does not “suffer.” The first clear trace of that conception in Judaic literature appears to be in the doctrine that of the two promised Messiahs,2 Ben Joseph and Ben David, Ben Joseph is to be slain.3 Whence came that theorem it is for the present impossible to say; but it is presumptively foreign,4 and there are clear Gentile parallels.

An obvious precedent to begin with lay in the Greek myth of the crucified Prometheus ;5 but on the whole the most likely pagan prototype is to be seen in the slain and resurgent Dionysos, one of whose chief names is Eleuthereos, the Liberator,6 who was specially signalised as the God “ born again.” As the Jewish Messiah was to be primarily a “ deliverer,” like the series of legendary national heroes in the book of Judges, a popular God so entitled was most likely to impress the imagination of the dispersed Jews and their proselytes. The same epithet, indeed, may well have attached to ancient deities such as Samson, who is a variant of the deliverer Herakles, and was one of the “ deliverers ” of the pseudo-history, as
well as to the original Jesus whose myth is Evemerised in Joshua. Samson, too, like Dionysos, was “ only-begotten.” 7 But in any case a proximate motive is needed to account for the post-exilic or post-Maccabean revival of such conceptions in a cult form ; and it is to be found in the prevailing religious conceptions of the surrounding Hellenistic civilisation, where, next to Zeus, the Gods most in evidence were Dionysos and Herakles, and the Son-sacrificing Kronos.